Whats Your Original Face?

“I am in You,You are in Me,There is no distance or distinction.” – Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Who Are You Looking At?

Everyone feels that just because they are breathing, that they are alive. Biologically this may be true, but unless you have a deep zest for life, a deep reverence for existence, can you really say your living?

Our modern day world has caused us to lose connection to that which would allow us to see the magnificence of life. This has happened because in society we are expected to play certain roles.

Society is artificial, we slowly get conditioned into having many faces. To be yourself in society can cause you great inconveniences, hence why almost no one ever shows who they really are. Many of us don’t even know who we are are anymore, we just think we do.

Have you ever noticed how many different people you pretend to be throughout your day? Have you become aware of all the subtle aspects of each face that you wear? When you are in the office you act in a certain way, you know what to show and what to hide. Do you change the way you talk? Do you change your body language?

How about when you come home. Do you put on the face of a father, of a lover? The reality is that many of us have dozens of different personas.

The word persona is a very significant word, it is a Latin word meaning mask. This is where the word personality originated from, our personalities are the masks we use to participate in society.

So whats the problem with us having so many personas? The problem is that we start to believe that that is who we are. We become identified to all these peculiar and unique mental constructs.

Whats wrong with this? Well, before we know it we are living with a crowd of people inside us, all existing independently of each other. With each personality coming with it’s own sets of likes and dislikes.

How we view and take part in the world depends on which personality is in charge at the time. We become conflicted, it’s too hard to keep things in order. You lose track of all the faces you have. You become unconscious. You say “I can’t believe I just did that, that’s so unlike me.”

The personas you present to other people vary according to the social environment that you may be engaged in, and will be different to the ones you have when you are alone.

If your not aware of the game, of the play, you are participating in, putting on all these different masks will drain you. We long for the moments when we can be authentically us, putting away all our masks.

If you are a person of awareness, you will be able to clearly see the many faces you display, but you will not become identified to them. You simply use them as a social tool, it is needed, otherwise you will bring unnecessary difficulties into your life. When you know they are just masks you use them more efficiently.

If someone comes and insults your mask of a Lawyer, the insults don’t touch you, they are touching your mask. You don’t react, you respond accordingly. If they point out something that is true, you simply thank them and move on.

You use your masks instead of your masks using you. You don’t derive your sense of self from your masks.

Discovering Your Original Face

If you learn to become aware of your personas, who or what is it that becomes aware of it? Go inside your self and seriously inquire into what was your original face. How did you come into this world?

Going deep within you will realize that you are just the witnessing presence, the problem is that your inner witness became entangled with all of the minds content.

The more you learn to witness your mind, without judgment or comparison, the more you will will be able to see how all your personas operate. But don’t try and change what you see, otherwise it will just be one fragment trying to change another fragment.

Seeing it is enough. But we are so conditioned that we will fall many times, we will judge and condemn everything we see. Don’t give up, soon through the power of witnessing, you will begin to recognize the real voice that exists within you. When your personalities start to loose their grip on you, the energy that was invested in them turns into awareness. The freedom to look.

You will no longer be a slave to all the various moods and emotions of the different faces you carry. You will begin to relax more, falling into restful awareness, you will know what it is to be yourself. You will know your original face. Meditation is merging with the witness.

Shakespeare once said that all the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players. Knowing your original face you will know how to play this game called life.

If you have any personal insights you would like to add, please join the conversation below and leave your comments.

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15 Responses to Whats Your Original Face?

Hi Ivan,
A very useful post, very beautiful. But I don’t entirely agree that the inner witness became entangled with all of the minds content. The two are vastly separate. We just attach to the lower level identities of the mind like the labels we place on ourselves (husband, doctor, daughter, age, etc…) Once we begin to remember the auspicious qualities like bliss, compassion, silence, eternal, etc… we can start to really open our eyes, let the mind-based identities dissolve or at least keep them in their respective places, and we begin to wake up.

Thanks my friend :)..your right I did not do a very good job on explaining the inner witness sufficiently and how it becomes attached..but all that matters is that people go in..they will figure it out…after all what ever description i give wont be the described :)…hope your well…namaste…

Once again thanks so much Ivan, you really help me question many important facets of my life. I have this deep inner urge to discover my original face, I know it’s there just need to do a little digging.

I agree with you Ivan. Sometimes when I “dive” into my self, I feel something that hardly I can hardly explain. Something that there is the “real” me deep inside. By the way, nice article you posted here.

As a mom of two little boys, I wear many different hats. I’ve felt how easy it is to completely lose yourself in parenthood and let your “true identity” merge into the melting pot of those you love and serve.

Parenting is a delicate balance between losing yourself and finding yourself. Kids have a special way of giving you the opportunity to witness your true self emerging, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Yet in that witnessing, it all just IS. It is quite the intense process of finding that original face 🙂

Ah, awareness & the inner self. But we have so much ego covering all this up, it makes it difficult to be still enough to get to your original face. Its much easier to remain in the reactive mode due to our conditioning. So thank you for posting something speaking about how to break this pattern!

“If someone comes and insults your mask of a Lawyer, the insults don’t touch you, they are touching your mask.”
That is a great take on the subject. Thank you. I shall remember that one for the future.

Your write up is interesting and inspiring too,i like the fact that you pointed out the issue of personalities,a whole lot of people don’t know that most of the personalities they have are borrowed,so as to fit into the society. I want to draw your attention to temperaments and that each person has multiple temperament. what do you say about it,compared to the personality thing

Mr Ivan
Thank you very much.Lots of wisdom in you and you grown a lot vertically.
I realized that I am not this body (which others used to identify me),mind(thoughts) or self image (ego).
I am “pure consciousness” .
I have to stay in this physical body with the thoughts and impressions crated in my mind.

can you help me how i can change bad impressions in mind.If my belief system an impressions in mind are pure ,it will create only positive thoughts. so to do it either in meditative sate (no thoughts) or in witness state. ( please change my question if you have a better version of my question)

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